Denver Airport To Offer Free EV Charging

Those of you who’ve been following Colorado’s bid to boast the world’s greenest parking facility at the Denver International Airport will be pleased to know that the project is coming along ahead of schedule, and is now slated to be open sometime in the middle of next month.

The project, formerly known as Green Park–and now, perhaps less memorably, as Canopy Airport Parking–is located at 8100 Tower Road and will showcase a virtual smorgasbord of renewable energy technologies, including solar, geothermal, and wind energy. Shuttles fueled by natural gas, biodiesel and hybrid electric/gas will service the facility.

image via Denver Airport Transportation

In another plus for green-minded travelers, Greenscape Capital Group (the builders behind the project) recently announced that the Canopy Airport Parking Facility will also feature a “Garage Juice Bar”– a.k.a., charging stations for electric vehicles. This high-power Level-2 EV charging station with the SAE-approved J-1772 charge point (compatible with all makes of electric cars) was created in conjunction with BMW Group DesignworksUSA and will offer charging services for free.

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Susan DeFreitas has covered all manner of green technology for EarthTechling since 2009. She is a graduate of Prescott College for the Liberal Arts and the Environment, and has a background in marketing green businesses. Her work on green living has been featured in Yes! Magazine, the Utne Reader and Natural Home.

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The yellow and purple Audi A2 car took around seven hours to complete the 600-kilometre (372-mile) stretch, even had the heating on.

Driver Mirko Hannemann, the chief of DBM Energy, drove the distance at 90 km/h (55 miles per hour) on average, had the heat on and was able to whisk around a few more miles in the city. When the A2 electric finished, it still had 18% of the initial electric charge in the battery.

It has a lithium-metal-polymer battery. DBM Energy, the company that built the battery and electric motors into the Audi A2, said the battery would function for 500,000 kilometres.

A representative of the car said the Audi still featured all the usual creature comforts such as power steering, air-conditioning and even heated seats as well, so it was not like the car was especially made for long distance record attempts

The German engineers said their car was special because the battery was not installed inside the luggage area, but under the luggage area, meaning the full interior space of the car was still available

The battery, based on what DBM Energy calls the KOLIBRI AlphaPolymer Technology, comes with 97 percent efficiency and can be charged at virtually every socket. Plugged into a high-voltage direct-current source, the battery can be fully loaded within 6 minutes

The young inventor couldn’t give an exact price for his battery — he said that was dependent on scaling effects — but vowed it wouldn’t just be more powerful, but in the end also cheaper than conventional lithium ion batteries.

What’s more important, the technology which made the trip possible is available today.

German Economics Minister Rainer Bruederle, who subsidized the drive, said it showed electric cars are not utopian but really work.